


Straight Up; No Ice

by purewanderlust



Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, Hands, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Experimental, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purewanderlust/pseuds/purewanderlust
Summary: Danny and Rusty and cocktails in the aftermath of a job gone south.
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 71





	Straight Up; No Ice

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what this is, but I think I like it, so here you go! Unbeta'd as I just scribbled it out in my notes app in a weird fervor over the last couple hours.

Danny is reclining on the leather sofa; one foot still planted on the floor, an arm thrown over his face. A crumpled bow tie, two bottles of antiseptic, and a pile of bloody gauze strips are scattered across the glass-top coffee table by his knee. His fingers, too, are stained red. He tells himself that he will get up and wash his hands after five more minutes of deep breathing.

Rusty is puttering silently around the kitchenette. The clink of glass on metal makes Danny drop his arm and sit up, squinting disapprovingly at his partner over the back of the couch. 

"I'm fine," Rusty replies, even though he hasn't said anything yet. 

"You should be resting," retorts Danny.

"After I get a drink."

Danny narrows his eyes. Chuckling, Rusty lifts his hands in a placating gesture. It has the opposite effect that he'd been hoping for, because Danny's gaze instantly snaps to his bandaged left hand and fills with self-recrimination.

Admittedly, it's a helluva cut, carving a path from the meat of his thumb down through his palm, creeping across the inside of his wrist and halfway up his forearm. It's neatly stitched and glued and wrapped in a clean, white bandage now, giving his left arm a mummy-like appearance, which Rusty privately thinks is pretty badass.

Danny doesn't agree, but the bandages are better than the blood by a long shot. Rusty looking like a goddamn Boris Karloff character would be better than the way his face had drained of color and his lips had started to turn blue while Danny tried to staunch the wound. He can still taste the metallic tang of blood on the air and his stomach lurches.

"Hey," Rusty turns back from his excavation of the mini-fridge to give him a scolding look. "Quit it, will ya?"

"But if I--"

"Nah. It wasn't your fault." This is a lie. A lie of kindness--the only kind Rusty's ever managed to tell him--but a lie nonetheless. Danny doesn't respond. "You want a drink?"

"You're not going to sit down otherwise."

Rusty smirks. "Gotta get my blood sugar back up."

It's a bad joke and he knows it, but the glare Danny shoots him is more irritated and less guilt-ridden, so he figures it's worth it. He winks and turns back to the complementary bar cart with a calculating eye. Bone deep weariness is pulling down on him like gravity, but he'll be damned if he's going to show it. He plucks a crystal decanter from the shelf with his uninjured hand and waves it in the air. 

"Daiquiris?" Danny tries to keep the disgust out of his voice, but if the curl of Rusty's lip in profile is any indication, he's not very successful. "Fair enough."

He watches as Rus prepares the drinks. His sleeves are already rolled up from when Danny had to play surgeon earlier. Despite the injury, his hands are as steady as ever. He holds the handle of the jigger delicately between the knuckles of his pointer and middle finger on his injured left hand, pouring a measure of rum from the decanter in his right without spilling a drop. When he overturns the jigger into the shaker, Danny can see his tan, callused palm peeking out from beneath bandages.

His eyes travel up the length of Rusty's arm and catch on bloodstained silk. Static fills his brain for long enough that he misses the limes being sliced, which is probably for the best. Next thing he knows, Rusty has half of one cupped in his uninjured palm, squeezing its juice into the shaker. Danny exhales shakily. Keeps his eyes below the wrist, on those familiar hands that move with such confidence.

Syrup, ice, a few dashes of bitters, and the lid goes on. Rusty's forearm flexes as he shakes the mix and Danny focuses on that instead of on Rusty's blood drying under his fingernails or the way Rusty had clung to him as he'd fumbled to knot his bowtie into a makeshift tourniquet.

"Hey." With an effort, Danny jerks his gaze up to meet Rusty's. "Thirsty?" A froth-filled coup glass sits on the polished marble counter between them. Danny looks at it, then back at Rusty, his mouth going dry.

There's a familiar, intent look on Danny's face as he rises from the sofa, and whatever witty quip Rusty might've said next dies in his throat. He keeps his hands behind his back as Danny slinks around the counter, bypassing the daiquiri and coming to a stop well into his personal space. Rusty wraps his fingers around his own opposite wrist--his injured wrist--and waits.

"You could've _died_ ," Danny says.

He tries a shrug and a devil-may-care smile. "But I didn't."

Danny grabs him, fingers pressing bruise-tight into his biceps. "But you _could've._ And it would've been my fault."

Rusty opens his mouth before he has a retort ready, falling back on grifter instinct, but he doesn't get a chance to come up with anything because suddenly Danny swoops in and seals their lips together in a motion that feels both deeply shocking and fully inevitable.

Rusty Ryan has told a lot of lies in his life. He's sort of an expert at it, but even he can't pretend that he hasn't thought about kissing Danny Ocean before now. As it so happens, the reality is infinitely better than his not-infrequent fantasies. Danny's noiser, for one, giving a breathless cut-off groan when Rusty's bites down on his lower lip. Rusty chuckles against his mouth and one of Danny's hands slides up the side of his neck and into his hair. He gives a reproving tug and Rusty's laughter cuts off on a gasp. Danny takes the opportunity to take control and kiss him even more thoroughly, tongue slipping as smooth as whiskey into Rusty's mouth. It's meticulous and addictive, and he's irresistibly drawn along for the ride.

When air becomes a necessity, they finally break apart. Rusty stares, trying not to look like he's been as completely ruined as he feels, but the sparkle in Danny's eyes tells him he's failing miserably.

"You didn't even try your daiquiri," he chastises instead of acknowledging it.

Danny reaches back, lifts the coupe glass, and takes a sip, all without looking away from Rusty's face. "Too much sugar."

"What can I say, I got a sweet tooth." 

"Oughta take better care of yourself." Danny is already leaning back in.

Rusty laughs and meets him halfway.

"That's what I've got you for."

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This initially started as an exercise to see if I could smoothly switch perspective back and forth between two characters in third-person limited multiple times during a single scene. I ended up with a thousand words of homoerotic mixology, which I'm not entirely mad about.


End file.
